this is bbc news. the headlines... the second impeachment trial against donald trump has begun in the us senate. he's accused of inciting the mob attack on the capital building injanuary. a leading democrat says the case is clear but the former president's lawyers insist the trial is about politics. scientists from the who who have been investigating the origins of the pandemic say they don't believe the virus escaped from a lab. they can't say where it'd come from. they suggested it might have arrived on an important frozen food. mary wilson whose music was a defining sound of the 1960s has died at the age of 76. the black all—female group broke down racial and gender barriers in the us with their powerful soundtrack.

non—bbc news, its time for a bracing dose of hardtalk —— now on bbc news. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. us—china relations will do much to shape the geopolitics of the 21st century, and it feels like the risk of long—term confrontation, even military conflict, is rising. from trade to taiwan, the trump administration talked tough on china and an increasingly assertive beijing responded in kind. my guest is evan medeiros, president obama's top advisor on the asia—pacific region. is president biden ready to break with his own past and take on china?

evan medeiros in washington, welcome to hardtalk. great to be here, stephen. it's a pleasure to have you on the show. we in particular want to tap in to your experience. you were a very senior advisor to president obama on china and wider asia—pacific region for several years. when you look back and you consider what is happening now in china and to us—china relations, can you say to me that president obama actually got it wrong on china? well, as a former policymaker, hindsight is always 20—20, you can always look back and wish that you did things differently. i think when we look at president obama's china policy, it's important to keep in mind that the first chinese

leader we had to deal with, hu jintao, was a very, very different leader than xijinping. he was far less ambitious, he was far less aggressive, and he was far less willing to accept and tolerate risk and friction externally. so, when i look back at our china policy, i wish that we had recognised quicker how different xi jinping was from hu jintao and recognised how he was going to take china politically, economically and strategically in a different direction. now, of course, once we recognised that, beginning in 2015, us policy started to harden substantially, including by ramping up efforts on multilateral trade agreements, working more with allies in increasing military deployments to the region. but it simply took time to recognise what the leadership transition from hu jintao to xi jinping meant strategically. but in 2011, and this is before xi jinping took over both

party and presidency, in 2011, barack obama said this and it's very striking the words he used. "i absolutely believe that china's peaceful rise "is good for the world and it is good for america." that sounds very naive to many americans ears now. well, look, you make decisions at the time with the information available to you. and at that time, under the hu jintao administration, they were...simply had a different set of priorities. they were much more interested in integrating with asia, producing a stable co—op, more cooperative relationship with the united states. the kind of ambition, ingression, use of capabilities that xijinping adopted was simply different under hu jintao. so, at that particular time, the us strategy was still a combination of engage and hedge. and you've got to remember, in 2011, we had adopted at that time the asia pivot strategy,

which is about hedging all of the risk of a stronger, more assertive china. so, even as he's talking about peaceful rise, he's building up alliances in the region. right. and you can pin a lot of the change on individuals and the rise of xijinping. but nonetheless, barack obama wrote a memoir of his white house years very, very recently — promised land. and in that, even in that, he's saying, you know, that we avoided conflict with china. it was all about, he says, mutual respect and strategic patience between the two countries. and i... again, that's written, of course, in the last 12 months. i put it to you again that you and he perhaps misread what china really was intent on doing with its massive rise in economic power. again, stephen, the obama administration adopted the historic asia—pacific pivot, which was premised

on building alliances and developing china in multilateral trade agreements. in other words, recognising that china is getting bigger, it's getting stronger, its intentions might change, which obviously they did under xijinping. so, it's about adopting a more collective strategy for hedging, if not balancing chinese power, right? no other president did that. the pivot acknowledged and recognised the challenges associated with a rising china. right. but if we look at what is happening today — and we're going to go perhaps in some detail into what's happening in the south china sea with china's aggressive actions in various islands and disputes with japan and the philippines — if we look at china's rhetoric on taiwan, which is certainly hotting up, if we look at what china's doing in hong kong with its national security law, look right across the piece, would you say today that

barack obama's notion that china's rise is good for america, that's obsolete? that's junked, right? right, that's right. i mean, it comes down to what kind of rising power china will be. in the early obama administration under the leadership of hu jintao and wenjiabao, there was still good reason to believe that a rising china would integrate more with current rules, norms and institutions, and that changed. right? and this is the history of international politics — leaders matter. and even though we were dealing with a different china under hu jintao and wenjiabao, we still adopted the asia pivot strategy, a strategy of trying to create a more permissible environment for the united states and its allies and partners in asia. so, there was always a recognition of the downside risk. the question is at what point

and how quickly do you shift from a cooperative strategy to a competitive strategy? and sure, if you want me to say that i wish we had done things differently, absolutely. again, hindsight is always 20—20. i wish that we had shifted more quickly to adopting a more competitive strategy. but these sort of big shifts in strategy take time and you want to make sure that you really are understanding what's going on in china before you assume that risk and friction. and one other point, stephen, on this. it's important to keep in mind that the rest of the world, if you think obama was naive about china, let's take a look at the rest of the world. i mean, as a british programme, you can fully appreciate that in 2015 — 2015 — george osborne and david cameron, your prime minister, were embracing china in the so—called golden era. george osborne actually visited xinjiang and praised

chinese policies in xinjiang. and so i don't say that to criticise you in britain, but just to explain that the rest of the world was far behind the united states in this recognition. listen, i'm in no way trying to play gotcha with you by trying to get you to say we got it wrong back in 2012—16. i'm simply trying to understand what's going to happen now, because i'm very mindful, as you must be, that there are key players injoe biden�*s administration who were involved in developing china policy in the past, who are going to be developing china policy in the future. and the question is, what have they learned? how have they changed in the last few years? and i'll take one example — kurt campbell, who's now, i think, in effect, asia policy chief in the national security council, a job very similar to the one you used to have. now, kurt campbell, a couple of years ago wrote a sort of mea culpa to a certain extent, saying that we have to do away with hopeful thinking.

so, are we now saying today that the biden team buys into the tough approach that donald trump and his team took on china? right. so, it's important for your listeners to understand the choices facing policies are not soft or tough. it's a combination of a cooperative agenda and a competitive agenda. what's the mix? is it 50-50, 60-40, 70-30? and that mix clearly had to change as we began to understand that xi jinping was taking china in a new and different direction. and the article that kurt wrote was basically saying that the mix that we had used before, let's call it 50—50, 60—40, had not tilted enough in the direction of more competitive, risky strategies because china had become more ambitious and more assertive externally. and i think if you just listen to the biden team, secretary

of state tony blinken, national security advisor jake sullivan, and kurt, when he starts publicly speaking, they've been very clear that they see china as a strategic competitor. if you look at the confirmation testimonies of most of the major cabinet members — secretary of state, defence, treasury — they all identify china as a strategic competitor. they all talk about the various risks and challenges in the us—china relationship. and then they talk about how the us has to adopt a far more competitive strategy... right. ..for doing so. so i actually think the biden team has been very clear about the direction... interesting. even your choice of words just there is very interesting to me, because you talk about competitor, a strategic competitor, you didn't use the word threat. but what we saw through the trump years is increasingly the notion of threat being used with regard to china. i'm going to quote to you the testimony of the army chief

of staff mark milley in 2019 to the us senate. he said, "i think china now is the primary challenge to us "national security over the next 50 to 100 years." he said, "look at china's improving military. "very, very rapidly they're improving in space, air, cyber, "maritime land domains, outspending us in r&d "and procurement." that was the trump administration and its senior military officials essentially talking of china as a long—term real military threat. do you see that? yes, i agree with that assessment. and as you may know, general milley continues to be the chairman of thejoint chiefs of staff, and he's advising president bidenjust like he advised president trump. so i do, i think china threatens american economic interests, security interests, diplomatic interests in asia and increasingly globally. and so when rex tillerson,

for example, the trump secretary of state for at least some of the trump administration, when he talked about china's island building in the south china sea as akin to russia's taking of the crimea. "we're going to have to send china a clear signal. "the island building stops. "and secondly, though, the access by china "to those islands is not going to be allowed." you were right behind that sort of... you don't like the word tough cos you think it's too simplistic, but that kind of approach to china is the one that you think biden should adopt too, is it? well, that's different. i mean, what secretary tillerson was saying and again, the quote that you have from him is from his confirmation testimony over four years ago, which he subsequently retracted and backed away from, what he said in that testimony was the united states should be prepared to go to war to defend the south china sea. and i think that's a totally separate issue. i mean, the question is,

is the south china sea a vital american interest of the united states now? there are allies, in particular the philippines, that have disputes with china over the south china sea. and i think that protecting the credibility of america's alliance commitments is a vital interest. but whether or not the us is prepared to go to war over the south china sea, i think is a totally separate issue. that's very interesting, too, because you'll be very well aware that a real stir was caused in washington just a couple of weeks ago with the publication by the atlantic council of an anonymous piece written by somebody who was described as a former senior government official with deep china expertise, saying that red lines must be established by the biden administration, red lines, which should be short, focused, enforceable and essentially involved any attack or blockade or hostile act, not only against us

forces, but against any us ally in the region. red lines. do you believe biden should be in the business right now, in the early days of his administration of setting out red lines to beijing? well, what i do think is that the administration needs to distinguish between vital national interests, in other words, those interests that the us is prepared to fight over and interests that are, let's call them, very important. but the business of red lines is a complicated one, because basically when you throw down a red line, you're essentially saying that this is a war and peace issue and you're almost taunting your adversary to cross one of those red lines. so, the whole red line business, if it...if it is an enterprise in distinguishing between vital interests and important interests, i think that's an important exercise. but trying to taunt your adversary i think is unwise

and doesn't really serve any american interests or those of our allies or partners. itjust strikes me in the course of this conversation, i'm picking up a sense in which you don't want to be drawn into rhetoric which is just out and out sort of confrontational. but donald trump did do that in several areas. he started in trade and in the end he ended up with a trade deal which he claimed won some very serious concessions from china and many independent observers agreed with him. donald trump's approach in some ways worked. would you accept that? well, can you specify where it worked? imean... ijust did, on trade. but it's not true. i mean, the whole purpose of the trade deal was to shrink the us—china trade deficit. the us—china trade deficit is at all time highs between the us and china. number two, the phase one trade deal would set very specific benchmarks for chinese purchases of american agricultural and energy goods

over a two—year time period. the chinese, as of today, are still 40% short of their benchmark of purchases for. . .for the first year. so, the phase one trade deal didn't work, and as i'm sure you know, stephen, the whole purpose of the trade negotiation when it was launched was to solve long—term structural issues in the us—china trade relationship, ipr protection, forced technology transfer, chinese state subsidies. the phase one trade deal dealt with none of these issues. so, to use your rhetoric, stephen, the trump strategy, yes, was very confrontational, push back, prodding china at every opportunity, but it was not very competitive. it didn't improve the american competitive position vis a vis china. it was just very confrontational. so, let's move on, then. you don't see any real positives out of trump's trade policy. what about his policy

on taiwan, where even in the last few weeks of his administration, the trump administration was changing the diplomatic deal on taiwan to ensure that the us would not accept any sort of protocols or limitations to its diplomatic outreach to taiwan. now, the taiwanese, i'm sure, were thrilled. the chinese were hugely infuriated. i'm just interested, again, as an obama official, very close to the new team who is working withjoe biden, do you think he should stick with the changes trump made on taiwan or not? well, what i think is interesting about trump's taiwan policy is that for the first three years of the administration, the trump team did absolutely nothing on taiwan, in large part because the president told them he doesn't care about taiwan and doesn't want to do anything on taiwan that would disrupt his ability to do a trade deal. once the trade deal gets

done injanuary of 2020, he then tells his team, you guys can do anything you want on taiwan. so, ignoring taiwan for three years is a problem and sends the wrong signals to beijing that you're willing to put us—china relations above the us—taiwan relationship, which was totally different than the obama administration. and i'm confident that the biden team won't ignore taiwan like the trump team did. now, when they finally did focus on taiwan in their last year in 2020, they made some very significant and important arms sales to taiwan. and i think that's good and important. if i may interrupt, the obama team, i think it was maybe before you joined the team, but obama had always refused to sell taiwan the f—16 fighter planes, for example, that the taiwanese wanted. so it is interesting to me that you now think it was right for trump to...to sell significant arms to taiwan. well, your understanding of the

history is different than mine. the obama administration very much wanted to sell f—16s to taiwan. it was taiwan that got sticker shock. the f—16s were simply too big and too expensive at the time. so, what we agreed on was a compromise measure by which we would take the existing f—16s and upgrade them so their capabilities would actually be better than the ones they were going to purchase, which at that time was the most significant arms sales deal that the us and taiwan everdid. and we did that in the second year of the obama administration. so, arms sales are important and significant. i think taiwan deserves dignity and respect. i think that the us and taiwan under the biden team can and should think about new and creative ways to interact with one another. and so i'm hoping to see a much more vibrant and robust us—taiwan relationship within the existing one—china policy.

i think that can and probably will be done. the chinese have, in their first comment sincejoe biden took the white house, they've said that it is very important that mr biden moves away from the language and the actions of confrontation and seeks cooperation. do you think, for example, joe biden should therefore not do what the trump administration did and emphasise that what they see in xinjiang from the chinese government is, to quote officials in the trump administration, a policy of genocide and war crimes? or should joe biden continue with that kind of language and on hong kong, continue with the sanctions policy of sanctioning key hong kong officials deemed to be a part of the national security apparatus? i'm just trying to get a sense of whether you see continuity in those areas between trump and biden or not.

i think the biden approach is going to be a mix of continuity and change from trump. i mean, to put it in a sentence, i think the biden team is going to be far more competitive and less unnecessarily confrontational with china. i mean, the trump team didn't actually accomplish that much... is calling what's happening to the uighurs genocide, is that unnecessarily confrontational? well, the biden team has already done that. i mean, the secretary of state has said this multiple different times in public that he considers it a genocide. so, the biden team is on record. i think they're going to keep and probably expand the sanctions on both xinjiang and hong kong. the question is, can we get the rest of the world to go along with us? right? and i think that that's where it's important for both allies in europe and in asia, including the uk, to determine what their own position on these issues is. and i personally am very pleased and have been involved in discussions with british

think tanks and the new china research council and the uk parliament about how britain can play a role in a more competitive strategy that's not unnecessarily pugilistic. because the reality is, is the whole world needs to get serious about what a long—term strategic competition between the us and china looks like. right. just before we end, rex tillerson said that he thought war was a very real possibility. he believed that the trigger could well be taiwan within the next ten years. you study china all the time. you've worked in the us government advising on china. is it your view, too, given what you've told me about xijinping and his ambitions and his assertiveness, is it your view, too, that war is a very real possibility? i think on the issue of taiwan, which is a war and peace issue for china, a conflict is certainly possible. there are probably lesser risks related to accidental

or inadvertent conflict related to the south china sea or the east china sea. but the risk of conflict is there with taiwan. now, i believe that both sides have a variety of incentives not to allow the situation to escalate, and both sides are very steeped in the history of the taiwan issue. but it remains extremely sensitive on both sides, and i think those risks are there. and i think part of the biden strategy is going to have to be aware of deterring china from moving toward greater military coercion of taiwan, which has been happening in the last year. and i hope that that's part of their strategy. evan medeiros, it is no doubt an issue we will revisit, but we have to end there. thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you.

hello. the cold snap across the uk continues. and no sign of anything milder for the remainder of this week. very cold nights ahead and some pretty bitterly cold days as well. a subtle change for today is that the wind will be lighter than it has been on monday and tuesday, though perhaps it won't feel quite as raw, but it's still an easterly or northeasterly wind. still some chains of showers being fed in, some making their way a reasonable way westwards. some of the heaviest snow on wednesday possibly for kent and sussex, the southeast of scotland and the northeast of england.

as we move overnight wednesday into thursday, i've got the pressure pattern on behind me, notice how the isobars open up. the wind becomes much lighter. now, as i said, that wind has made it feel very raw through the early part of the week, but for very cold nights, what you need are very light winds, and that is what we will have to take us into thursday morning. and that's important because at the moment, that's indicating signs that for some areas to the south of the uk, these are the temperatures of the towns and cities. we could have the coldest night in around a decade for some of the suburbs of london, for example. thursday, dawn, icy but with a lot of sunshine. there will be quite a bit of fair weather and largely light winds, a few north sea showers. temperatures, well, scraping just above freezing. towards the west, perhaps three degrees for belfast and plymouth. notice a little frontal system trying to push its way in here. this is the first signs of something a bit milder trying to approach from the atlantic. friday, it still looks like it'll be the high pressure in the east and the cold air, though, that will dominate.

we could see some more organised snow showers for a time running into the northeast of scotland. towards the west, i think advancing cloud through the day turning any sunshine hazy, but 4 degrees in belfast, 5 degrees in plymouth. some signs of something milder trying to head in. subzero, though, further east across the uk. and then for the weekend, it's that classic battleground that we so often talk about — high pressure in the east pushing the cold air our way, low pressure trying to come in from the atlantic and bring in something milder. at the moment, it looks like by sunday, we could start to see some significant improvement in our temperatures. but before that, there is the possibility of some further snowfall, but this time pushing into the west as we begin our transition.

a very warm welcome to bbc news. my name is mike embley. with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the second impeachment trial against donald trump begins in the us senate. we are eeally here because the majority and the house of representatives does not want to face donald trump as a political rival in the future. the world health organization investigation concludes coronavirus did not originate from a lab in china but they cannot say where it did come from. there uae historic mission

enters ovid around mars.